Apart
from installing more CCTV (Closed Circuit Television) units in EDSA-Magallanes
Interchange in Makati City and the
deployment of additional patrols from the Philippine National Police, Metropolitan
Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman Francis Tolentino has expressed his firmness to solve the recent
series of rape and abduction incidents known as the Magallanes “rape van” case and had offered a P200,000 reward to anyone who
can provide any lead or information to
the arrest of the perpetrators.

This
is in reference to the separate rape and abduction incidents that happened starting
September 30, along Magallanes Interchange where three victims, a 21-year-old student, a 14-year old girl, and
a 19-year-old transgender, were forcibly
abducted while they were walking on the said interchange by three men riding a
van. They were then gagged, hit and then
sexually-molested inside the moving vehicle.

reports show that the victims were pulled inside the van and were raped, image courtesy of ANC

According
to the first reported victim, the 21-year-old student was walking along
EDSA-Magallanes around 6:30 p.m when a heavily tinted van stopped in front of
her and someone from the van pulled her bag. She thought at first that it was a
holdup but then three men who were wearing bonnets grabbed her into the van.
She said aside from the driver, there were three other men who forced her to sniff
something, probably chloroform from a handkerchief, hit her and
sexually-assaulted her. She was left for dead, unconscious and naked from waist
down at a grassy side of a highway in Malolos, Bulacan where she was helped by
a woman and her daughter.

The
other similar rape and abduction incident was reported by a 14-year-old student
who was on her way to school along Kalayaan Avenue in Makati when she was
abducted by men and raped her as well. She was able to escape when the
abductors stopped at a gasoline station.

With
the rape incidents, a 19-year-old transgender woman revealed that she was also
victimized with the same way of abduction, same month last year. She recalled
that she was on her way to school when three men on board a heavily-tinted van
grabbed her and pushed her inside the vehicle in broad daylight at the Magallanes
Interchange near EDSA. She said that the perpetrators are “Middle
Eastern-looking men” and when they realized that she is a transgender, she was
beaten and hit, raped and kicked out of the van in a grassy land in Laguna.

MMDA
is closely monitoring the investigation of the three cases, linking those incidents if they were done by the same group of suspects. Nonetheless, they offered a P200,000 reward
to anyone who can provide information for the arrest of the group of criminals for speedy resolution.